


Twisted Situation

by hallelujah99



Category: Andi Mack (TV)
Genre: AU, Fluff, Happy, M/M, Meet-Cute, One Shot, T. J. Kippen & Amber Are Siblings, T. J. Kippen & Amber Are Twins, Texting, ambi if you squint, everyone works at a mall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 06:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19145713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallelujah99/pseuds/hallelujah99
Summary: Pretzel Shop AU. T.J. works in the pretzel stand of a mall that's never too busy, which gives him ample time to gaze over at the cute boy working nearby, in Underdog Shoes.





	Twisted Situation

11 am on a Wednesday. T.J. could count on both hands the number of customers he’s seen walking through the mall in the 3 hours since it opened. His parents always talked about their high school days, hanging out at the mall with all their friends, which is why they encouraged him to apply to this job, working at the pretzel stand in the middle of the mall walkway. These days, however, nearly half the mall was vacant spots where stores used to be, and the stores that were still around didn’t see much action apart from Christmas time. T.J. would be long gone by then, he was only here for the summer, despite his manager’s pleas to stick around because not only was there hardly anyone shopping in the mall, there was hardly anyone working either.

 

It wasn’t a bad job, though, he could spend most of his time messing around on his phone...or looking into the store across the way from him, Underdog Shoes. It was a small store, with all the merchandise up against the walls, which gave him a clear view to the back of the store where the cash register was. And behind the cash register was the cutest boy T.J. had ever seen. He was perfect eye candy as T.J. took breaks from staring at his phone to make sure there wasn’t anyone trying to buy a pretzel. The other boy was frequently staring at his own phone, though sometimes he would have friends come over to the store, two girls who worked in other stores in the mall. T.J. wondered if that meant this kid, Underdog, as he mentally called him, was interested in making friends with other mall employees, and if he should try to catch him after a shift sometime to try and forage a friendship. He never did get the courage though. He was usually petty confident and made friends easily, even with cute boys, but this boy was SO cute, not to mention he did ping T.J.’s devleoping gaydar a bit (or was it just his please-be-gay-dar?). At any rate, T.J. had resigned himself to watching Underdog from a distance, occasionally making awkward eye contact, and dreaming about what could never be.

 

Seeing as he’d been staring at this boy with no hope of ever interacting with him for over a month, you could say T.J. was pretty floored when he looked up from his phone to see the guy standing right in front of the pretzel stand, looking quite panicked.

 

“Can I help you?” He asked, forgetting to use his fake customer service voice for a second.

 

The brown haired boy took a deep breath before rapidly firing off what he needed to say “Look, I’m sorry, I know this is really bad and strange and I’m probably gonna get fired anyway but, ugh, my friend just texted me that she needs me and it’s an emergency and she just works at the craft store right around the corner in here, anyway she says she needs me to come right away and I was wondering if you could watch the store for me and just like text me if someone comes in?”

 

T.J. stood still for a second, taking it all before nodding. “No problem, except I mean, I don’t have your number.” He did his best to make it sound as little as possible like he was asking for his number, even though that’s exactly what he was doing-but only out of necessity for this boy’s mission.

 

“Right!” He replied. “My number!” He flailed his hands around for a second, seemingly looking for something, before he grabbed a pen and a napkin and quickly wrote his number, underneath which he wrote “Cyrus.”

 

“Thank you so much, I’ll be right back, but text me if I need to hurry!” He said, before taking off towards the craft store.

 

T.J. was left feeling conflicted, on the one hand, he had just watched the cutest guy ever (and YES, he was even more gorgeous up close) give him his number. On the other hand. T.J. wished he had been quick enough to hand Cyrus his phone to punch in his number, because there was about a 50/50 shot he could read whatever Cyrus wrote correctly. He was way too self-conscious to tell Cyrus this problem, of course, but he had a plan to compensate anyway.

 

He took a picture of the napkin and sent it to his sister.

**T.J.: can you type out this number please?**

**Amber: 221-563-7782**

T.J. pressed and held the number and was able to add it to his contacts without ever having to try to decipher it. Amber always had his back when it came to his dyscalculia, he always had her back when it came to her anxiety, and they always had each other’s backs when it came to homophobic family members. He was about to text her to say thanks, and maybe even that he loved her, or that she was a great sister, when she decided to throw all that out the window.

 

**Amber: who’s Cyrus? ;)**

**T.J.: just this guy who works in a store near mine. He had to run out for a second and asked me to text him if someone comes to the store.**

**Amber: you mean the “amazingly cute” Underdog guy?**

Crap! T.J. had totally forgotten that while the two of them had a movie night a few nights ago he’d told her about his crush! She’d baited him into it though, talking about some girl she’d met...

 

**T.J.: nah, haven’t seen him around this week, it’s some other guy, he’s in his 40s and work at the vitamin shop.**

He felt a little bad for lying but Amber could be way too nosy and meddling, and now that she also had Cyrus’s number, he couldn’t take any chances.

 

Just then, T.J. noticed a man in his early 30s walking through the mall, T.J. pleaded in his head with the man to not go into the shoe store, but sure enough, he headed right into it.

 

T.J. pulled out his phone and quickly typed out a message to Cyrus

 

**T.J.: there’s a guy in the shoe store**

He hesitated, wondering if that sounded too detached, he thought about adding a grimacing emoji but didn’t know what kind of phone Cyrus had, so he wasn’t sure how the emoji would show up...he also thought the guy might just leave the store, but he was walking around like he was looking for something (an employee, probably) so T.J. sent the text.

 

He watched as the guy continued to browse the shoes and look around the clearly empty store. T.J. could feel his heart beating wildly. What if Cyrus didn’t make it back quickly? What if he got fired and blamed it all on T.J.? Sure they were never friends (or anything) and T.J. never thought they really had a chance, but now they definitely wouldn’t.

 

Just then, Cyrus came tearing around the corner, running at what was probably his top speed, though he didn’t exactly look like a track star. Somehow it made him cuter and more endearing to T.J.

 

Cyrus ran into the shoe store and the guy turned around and greeted him with a smile. “Cyrus, hey, what’s up?” T.J. heard the man say.

“Bowie? Hey! What’re you doing here?”

 

They knew each other?! (And both had first names that were the last names of famous singers?) Well, of course, he should have known, because the mall never has any actual customers.

 

“Oh I just had to come to the mall to grab a few things and thought I’d pop in and say hi to everyone! So hi!”

 

“Hi Bowie!” responded a very clearly confused Cyrus.

 

“Well I’ll see you later, little man!” Bowie said as he headed out of the shoe store. He winked at T.J. as he walked by which was just confusing but also not totally surprising given the 5 second preview of his personality he had just seen.

 

Cyrus came out of the store then, up to the pretzel stand. “I’m so sorry about all of this. I had no idea he was going to show up.”

 

“Hey, it’s all good, most interesting thing that’s happened around here in a long time.” T.J. smiled, trying to calm the still-panicked Cyrus.

 

“Yeah but the whole situation is just weird.” Cyrus said.

 

“What do you mean? What was the emergency after all?” T.J. asked, hoping his wasn’t overstepping his bounds.

 

“Well my friend who works in the craft shop, Andi, she wanted me to go over there because she thought she might have left her purse in my car, but she couldn’t come over here because her ankle just randomly started hurting for no apparent reason. So she asked me to bring my car keys over there so that she could get her purse out after her shift but not have to come over here to get my key. Then instead of just letting me drop the keys, she wanted me to meet and talk to this girl she met recently, Amber, and I have no idea what any of that was about. And the weirdest part of all of this, is that Bowie, that guy who came to the shop? That’s Andi’s dad!”

 

T.J.s eyes widened and the wheels started turning in his head. Because as weird as it was that the “customer” was Cyrus’s friend’s dad, there was one thing that was even weirder.

 

“Wait, Amber, does she have long blonde hair, was glued to her phone the whole time, and she kinda does _this_ with her face?” T.J. asked, imitating his sister’s trademark smirk.

 

“Yes, actually...” Cyrus answered, starting to look even more confused “you really look alike, actually, especially when you do that.”

 

T.J. debated not telling him for a second before finally admitting with a shrug “well, we’re twins, so.”

 

Cyrus nodded, his question of why T.J. and Amber looked so similar answered. But confusion washed over his face as that opened up a myriad of more questions.

 

“Wait, so your sister and my best friend...and then her dad...” Cyrus trailed off, a bundle of confusion.

 

T.J. felt his phone vibrate, it was a Snapchat from Amber. He opened it to find a selfie of his sister the girl with short brown hair who he’d seen visiting Cyrus, laughing at the camera, with the caption “Got you! It was a set up. We set you up!”

 

T.J. held the phone up to Cyrus “Is this Andi?” Cyrus looked at it and nodded. His eyes scanned the words on the screen. “What does she mean it was a set up?”

 

T.J. blushed. “I guess they wanted us to have each other’s numbers.”

 

“Oh.” Cyrus answered. Then, the realization appeared to hit him, his eyes widened and he gasped “Ohhhhhhh.”

 

T.J. smiled. “Well, it worked. Now we’ve got each other’s numbers.”

 

* * *

4 pm, Wednesday afternoon. T.J. pulled into his driveway and picked up his phone, and his heart lept when he saw a new text from Cyrus.

 

**Cyrus: hey, would you wanna grab coffee and muffins after work tomorrow?**

**T.J.: id love to :)**

**Author's Note:**

> Wow like I'm not even going to lie, you guys, I'm super happy with this story. I've never written anything like with a twist or whatever (if you can call it that haha) but I'm literally actually really proud of myself with the storyline here. I came up with it on a hike and then went back to my cabin and wrote the whole thing on my phone (which autocorrected TJ to T.J. lol) and now that I finally have my laptop again I'm so excited to post this for people to enjoy! 
> 
> Please comment if you can, it means so much <3


End file.
